The Rear Ramp's Work Order Carried A Familiar Signature

I called Elena before I enlarged the map.

“Don't go downstairs,” I said.

She was quiet for one breath.

“Tell me exactly what you have.”

“A wake alert. Pack R-17. The last stored position is beside your rear ramp. That doesn't mean it's there now.”

“Good. Keep saying that last part.”

She had already gone home. I heard a kettle click off behind her.

She asked me to save the alert as it arrived, along with the account log. Then she called the county detective assigned to Samuel's case.

An hour later, Detective Mara Bell called me through the listed county line. She asked the same questions Elena had asked, in a different order.

“Has anyone asked you to watch this building?”

“No.”

“Did you place a tracker there?”

“No. The board came with the battery.”

“Why do you receive its messages?”

I read the service agreement aloud. Remote fault alerts were included for ninety days. The customer could cancel them in writing. Torin had checked KEEP SERVICE ACTIVE.

“I'd like that original form,” Bell said.

“You can have it with a receipt.”

“I'm hearing that about you.”

By midnight, Elena and Bell met me at the diner near the tide gate. Bell collected the form and my copies. Elena sat beside the window, where steam had turned the glass white.

“I've told my supervisor the annex may be involved,” she said. “Bell will handle searches there. I'm turning over my building access records too.”

“Will that hurt your job?”

“Keeping it quiet would.”

Bell laid a work order on the table.

Elena had obtained it from the annex maintenance system before stepping away from that part of the inquiry. It described an emergency pump battery delivered to Lower Bay B on Tuesday evening.

The listed serial number matched R-17.

“It might be doing exactly what this says,” Bell said. “Powering a pump.”

I looked at the figures.

“A forty-eight-volt pack can run a pump through the right controller,” I said. “But this delivery weight is wrong. They wrote nine hundred pounds. That pack weighs twenty-six hundred.”

“What does that tell us?”

“Someone didn't copy from the scale ticket.”

Bell circled the weight. She did not call it proof of a prisoner.

The receiving signature belonged to Harlan Pike. I knew him as Torin's yard manager, a narrow man who counted cash with both thumbs wet.

He had delivered R-17 to my shop.

Elena put another page beside it. Lower Bay B was leased to North Brace Marine, a company with Torin's business address on its annual filing.

“That's under your office?” I asked.

“Under the old records room,” she said. “Our floor is above it. The lower level has its own ramp and outside door.”

Her fingers tightened around her cup.

“I worked there until six yesterday.”

“You couldn't know from a ceiling,” I said.

She looked at me then. It seemed to cost her something to nod.

Bell asked for every delivery note I had received. She also wanted my paving notice and the cleanup bill.

“Keep running the shop normally, if you feel safe,” she said. “Don't seek anything out. Call if that changes.”

I went home with a number that would ring her directly.

Before bed, I checked my own ledger. Eight packs had left my shop. Four still waited for parts. I had spent $2,760 from my savings on cells and links, and Torin had paid me nothing. His credits against a made-up debt would not cover my power bill. I wrote the expense total beneath the job numbers. Even fear had to fit on a page if I hoped to explain it later.

At seven the next morning, Torin arrived before I opened.

He had coffee for the two drivers behind him. He had nothing in his hands for me.

“My manager says those packs have little maps,” he said.

“Location reports.”

“Erase them.”

“I need a written order.”

“You have my voice.”

I set a blank form on the bench.

“For warranty. I need the change signed.”

He stared at me. Then he smiled at the drivers.

“Duc loves his rules. That's why I trust him.”

He wrote: CLEAR ALL ROUTE MEMORY. Under reason, he put PRIVACY. He signed and pushed hard enough to tear the paper.

“The backups too,” he said.

“Those are completed service records.”

“Those are mine.”

He reached for the office computer. I stepped aside because I was not going to wrestle him beside three open battery cases.

He pulled the plug from the wall.

“Come to my office at noon. Bring every copy.”

After he left, I called Bell. She told me not to go to that meeting. She would arrange to collect the new order.

I hung the white R-17 tag on the dead computer screen.

Then my phone buzzed with a photo from an unknown number.

It showed my orchid cabinets through the shop's back window.